David Aaronovitch: Everyone wants to be a victim

'It is condescending rather than sympathetic not to argue with the Muslims of Birmingham and their slippery spiritual leaders'

Here's a question: was the attack on the World Trade Centre an attack on Christianity as a whole? Of course not. Don't be silly. Get a life. There may be some barmy pastor of a church with a long name out in Idaho who wants to look at it that way, but otherwise you won't get many takers for the "clash of religions" scenario. At least, not on this side of Bosphorus.

To call 11 September 11 an attack on civilised values is a slightly different matter, since few believe that it is very civilised deliberately to fly planeloads of software designers, rugby players and four-year-old kids into buildings full of accountants and brokers. Or is that just Hampstead?

So it is strange, in a way, that the leaders of the coalition find themselves forced to reassure the amorphous entity we all lazily call "The Muslim World" (as if Robin Hood still roamed Sherwood!) that the attempt to nab Osama bin Laden is not a war on Muslims. Why should anyone (other than the Islamic equivalents of my fictional Idaho zealot) believe that it was?

But then, why do some people believe obviously absurd things? Why do they decide to be deluded?

I became quite depressed last week after reading a long article in the New Yorker by Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg had spent some time in Egypt, interviewing cleric, journalists and "opinion-formers", both before and after 11 September. One of his interviewees was the editor of Al-Usbu, a Mustafa Bakri. Bakri, by no means a fundamentalist, was in no doubt who had carried out the atrocity. It was the American right wing acting (of course) with the assistance of Israeli intelligence. A senior (if radical) Muslim cleric said the same thing. He'd read on the net that all the Jews that should have been busy making money on that Tuesday were, in fact, tipped off and failed to turn up.

Why must it be the Jews? Two reasons, I think. The Jews are infernally clever, and the Muslims are not. The Jews are the aggressors and the Muslims are the victims. The Muslims are always the victims.

Watching Panorama on Sunday night was even more depressing than reading Goldberg. The programme had been to Birmingham to talk to British Muslims about their feelings now that the coalition had begun the bombing of targets (and the occasional bombing of non-targets) in Afghanistan.

We met a variety of people, including a plausible clergyman who launched a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger assault on the government's claims that this was not a war on Islam. "They tell us that this is not a war on Islam," he told his all-male flock, "but how can we believe this when ..." When bombs are falling on Kabul, children are starving in Iraq, teenagers are being shot on the West Bank and so on and so on. "My people!" exclaimed one average man in the Clapham mosque.

The programme culminated in the anti-war demonstration in London. "I've never demonstrated about anything in my life before", said a headscarfed young woman. Not even over Tibet? Nope, no Muslims involved. It reminded me slightly (in that respect alone) of those anti-abortion marches which featured large bussed contingents of children from Catholic schools.

It is certainly true that those who are suffering under the bombardment in Afghanistan are Muslims. That is because very few people who aren't Muslims live in Afghanistan. There may be a cardinal-archbishop of Jalalabad, but I have never heard of him. And it's pretty clear that if Osama bin Laden had been a Sri Lankan Buddhist based near Jaffna, then the US would be bombing places with no Muslims in them. Would Muslim clerics in Birmingham be calling that a war on Buddhism?

The recent bloodbath in which a million Muslims (and not a few of other faiths) lost their lives was that instigated by the current leader of an Arab state, Saddam Hussein, in 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran. In 1982, rather than make peace, the Iranian regime launched a counter-invasion.

The war lasted until 1988. When it was over Saddam Hussein launched chemical attacks on the Kurds in Halabja, and shortly after , he invaded Kuwait. Were these "wars on Islam"?

During the past ten years, more than a thousand Shi'a and Sunni Muslims have been killed in religious disturbances in Pakistan. Were these wars on Islam? Were the wars of the Taliban against the mujahedin, wars on Islam? Or is a war on Islam only what happens when a non-Muslim attacks a Muslim? Can Muslims, relative to others, only be victims?

The word "victim" is the key here. Yesterday, Yasser Arafat flew in, and the airwaves were blue and white with Palestinian/Israeli dispute as to who was the real victim. You will recall Ariel Sharon's ludicrous comparison a fortnight ago of Israel with that ur-victim, 1938 Czechoslovakia. Since 1948, an oppressed people had sought a little homeland of their own, and the big, cruel people had tried (and still want) to annihilate them – it is understandable that bad things happen.

Being the victim means never having to say you're sorry. The psychology of victimhood, the desire for its status, can be seen in these islands from Oldham to the Ardoyne. What is the first objective of the BNP in its propaganda? It is to instill a sense of victimhood in whites; they are hard-done-by, discriminated against, refused jobs and housing and are themselves the real victims of racial attacks. (It may be worth recalling that one reason why governments have been so keen to ensure that this is not a "war on Islam", has been their desire to avoid any racist exploitation of the idea that Islam is at war with the rest of us. So far they have done pretty well.) In the Ardoyne a propaganda war is fought for the status of victim. It's the wee girls! No, it's the beleagured Prods!

The reverse side of this is to deny the victimhood of others. Goldberg found a substantial level of Holocaust-denying among senior Arab journalists. Deputy chief editor of Al-Gomhuriya, Lotfi Nasif, told him that the Holocaust was an exaggeration, that gas chambers were the product of Jewish imagination. "The crimes of the Zionists," he said, "far outweigh any of the crimes committed by the Nazis."

Needless to say, you will find Israelis who will not accept for a moment that Palestinians can be victims too. Both are like those communists of the 1930s who wanted to believe that the Moscow Trials were genuine. They too always found someone "independent" to cite.

There is a condition known as "hospital syndrome". When ill people enter hospital, they often surrender their volition, they sometimes give up the will to make themselves better.

Even their own welfare is somehow not their own responsibility. There was more than a hint of this in Birmingham and in Cairo. At this moment, however, Muslims need to fight and argue against the psychological damage caused by embracing victim status.

For the rest of us, it is condescending (rather than sympathetic) not to argue with the young Muslims of Birmingham and their slippery spiritual leaders. The truth is that they, like Christians, atheists, Jews and Zoroastrians, have their victims and aggressors. They too, are the authors of the flawed world in which they live.

The true victims are children blown up by atheists, exploded by God-fearing Muslims, bombed by bible-reading boys, or left orphaned by avoidable famines. If there is a war on anyone, it is the war inflicted by the stupid on the helpless.

David.Aaronovitch@btinternet.com